How to Really Love Your Prodigal, episode 93 (rebroadcast)

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover, help, and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast. And also help and hope for your own life journey. As many of you know, my wonderful husband Steve moved to heaven four months ago. I am missing him terribly, but God and friends are helping me in so many ways. One of the best things about our 47 years of marriage was that I knew he loved me. He told me so at least once a day.

0:42 He gave me lots of hugs. Every morning he made coffee and brought a cup to me and kept it filled. He put out the trash, rinsed the dishes, helped with the laundry, and he took care of the finances. And we talked through so much. How we were doing, what we were doing, how we could pray for each other. And he and I both worked at loving our prodigal well. Though that wasn't always easy or well received, throughout the hardest 15 years of our prodigal wilderness we never lost relationship with Josh.

1:23 We certainly weren't perfect at loving him, and he often made it hard and resisted our efforts. But through it all, he began to believe that we loved him. What I want to share with you today are some practical ways for you to really love your prodigal. Your situation may be very different from ours and the illustrations I use, but the suggestions I will give you can be helpful whatever your reality or who your prodigal is. So what we're going to look at is how to really, R-E-A-L-L-Y, love your prodigal.

2:04 And that's going to be an acrostic for the points I'm going to make. And so I do hope you'll take a minute to write them down or text them to yourself so that you don't forget. So really, R, the first letter, and the first word is respect. Think about how you feel if someone disrespects you. Some of the things our prodigals say and do can cause disrespect for them to well up in us. I know, I've done it. But if we can make the effort to show respect to them anyway as a person, after all, they are carrying the image of God even if they aren't showing it.

2:54 Here are three ways that you might respect them. Talk to them as you would to a friend or a co-worker. Yes, occasionally we're disrespectful to a person, but mostly we know how to be respectful. We should try it with our loved ones. They're a real person. They may be our child or some other connection that we have with them, but we should be able to show respect by the way we talk to them. Ask them for their opinion or for input on a decision or a plan. Does it feel good to you when someone says, hey, can I get your thoughts on this?

3:39 And so it will for your prodigal if you make the effort to ask for input from them. And then thank them when they do what you have asked them to do. I try to thank everyone who helps or serves me in some way, as I did today at the grocery store. So I also sought to always thank our son when he did what he should. And that tells him that I respected him as a person. So respect, the next letter in really is E and our word is encourage.

4:22 I believe my primary gift from God is to encourage people. And almost everyone can use encouragement and some desperately need it. A few words, doing a favor, even just a smile. And often our loved prodigals really need some encouragement. So how can you encourage them? Well, how about giving a sincere compliment? A lot of times we have a lot of negative things to say, we're not happy with what they're doing so we can be critical. But if we can look for something that we can compliment and do it sincerely about little things or big things, like what are they wearing?

5:11 How have they rearranged their room? They were being kind to a sibling. Give them a nice gift or they gave a nice gift. And then second, under encourage, recognize good work. Now I realize this can be challenging because they may not be doing much work. So you may have to start with lower expectations, whether it's school work, getting and keeping a job, following through on responsibilities at home, acknowledge when they do a good job or when they make the effort to do a good job.

5:52 Again, we're looking to encourage them and that will help. Now here's one you might not think of. You can encourage them by telling them they look nice. This morning I was in a meeting with some people that I knew well but hadn't seen in several years. I walked in the door and the first person I encountered said, Judy, you look so nice. Did that lift my spirits? It did. So I went into the rest of the meeting thinking, I look pretty good today. Well, maybe, maybe that would help your protocol. If they thought you thought they looked nice, now I realize what you think is nice and what they think is nice might not coincide.

6:40 But look for ways that you can tell them, I like your clothes, I like what you're wearing, I like your hair maybe. Look for ways to compliment them and encourage them. So respect, encourage. The next letter is A, affirm. Some of these may overlap a little but there are differences. Be assured affirmation is helpful for all of us. When someone affirms you in any way, it makes you feel better and it makes you feel they like you and you're wanting to show your protocol that you love them.

7:28 So how? Well, first, acknowledge good effort or good attitude. If they are in the habit of not putting forth good effort or good attitude, they are probably used to some negative feedback. Surprise them with some positive affirmation. Be specific but honest. Then ask how they did a project that was well done. Occasionally, our Josh got excited about some project he was working on. We would affirm that but also show more interest and ask, how did you come up with that idea or how does that work?

8:09 How did you know how to do that? Again, this is affirming him as a person who has good things to do and think and be able to be affirmed in. Another way to affirm is to support positive interests and activities. For quite a few years, our son's friends were mostly not good influences. But Josh liked a variety of activities, paintball, guitar, soccer, bowling, roller hockey. We tried to be supportive of whatever was his current interest.

8:51 That involved time and money but it did help him keep out of trouble some and expanded his circle of friends some. So we were glad to do that. It did get kind of expensive but, you know, it was a lot less expensive than bail at jail. So we have respect, encourage, affirm. Here's a really important one. Listen. Don't you hate it when you're talking with someone and they're looking at their phone or glancing around looking for someone else?

9:31 Many kids and young adults complain that their parents or teachers or coaches or bosses don't listen to them. One of the most important things that we can do to show love is to listen to them. How do we do that? Well, we can ask questions, ask about school or activities, interests, and listen to what they say. Don't just think, all right, I did my job, I asked and I listened. Now, no, stay. Try to engage them more in conversation. Josh really liked to tell me about paintball battles.

10:13 He liked to show me where he got bruises from getting hit by a paintball. But that was a way I could get him to talk and I could listen. He also loved to tell me how he was the enforcer on his soccer team. He was bigger than most of the kids and, yeah, so he was a good enforcer. He bragged about it, but I listened. Another thing that you can do to show your love in listening is to ask for input on family decisions. Include the whole family in a conversation about something you all will do together, like a vacation or getting a dog or buying a hot tub or going to visit grandparents.

11:02 Always a good idea, said the grandmother. Ask for their thoughts about it. Get their input. Try to come together for a decision so that it's not even just their input and then you make a decision, but that you agree. Listen to their thoughts and ideas. And here's a little bit more challenging one. Ask for input on setting boundaries and consequences. When you love a prodigal, you will need boundaries. You know that. And boundaries need consequences because boundaries get violated.

11:43 So as you're talking about setting some boundaries, include them in the conversation about your standards and expectations and unacceptable actions and what are their responses to those? What do they think? Do they understand why you think what you do? And if you can approach some kind of an agreement, then you could ask, well, what would be appropriate consequences if you don't live by these boundaries? You have to be able to live with the decisions, but listen well to them and do your best to include something of what they have suggested.

12:25 So real respect, encourage, affirm, listen, but we're looking at really. So what's the next L? Probably the most important of all, love. It's the biggest thing. If they believe you love them, maintaining relationship becomes more possible, even probable. So be sure that you tell them you love it, even if they shrug it off or don't pay attention. It's going into their head and registering, but it's good to show it and not just say it.

13:05 So what makes you feel loved? Hearing the words, I love you, but actions and words that follow that statement, something that proves it to you, maybe all the things we just looked at, respect and encourage and affirm and listen. Here's an idea. Discern their love language and make the effort to engage it. Perhaps you're familiar with the five love languages. I'm not personally fond of limiting kinds of descriptions, but they can be helpful. Of the five, my strongest ones, what really gets to me and makes me feel good is words of affirmation.

13:49 Another one is quality time. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to where you can find the love languages to help you think about what might be true of your loved one. If you can discern what your loved one's most likely love language is, try to employ it in your efforts to love well. Maybe you invite them to go on a trip or an outing with you, or you consistently cheer for them if they're involved in sports or some other kind of activity, or maybe there's a gift they really have been wanting and you can give that to them.

14:29 Really look for the things that say, I love you, to them and see if you can add to that. And then, wow, this one's really important on loving, and that's to pray for them. You must do this. Invite God into all your efforts to really love them, to respect them, to encourage, affirm, listen, and love. God will take and multiply the impact of your efforts. Don't go it alone. You have supernatural help and support.

15:11 And I'm going to include a link also in the show notes to some prayer help to help you as you pray. So, respect, encourage, affirm, listen, love, and then there's a why at the end. So finding the right why word was a little challenging, but then I found it. And that word is yield. Yield. It's what God told me. How do you do that? Well, several things. Agree to their point of view sometime.

15:52 When you can, there are some things that would be their opinion that you couldn't agree with, but you could help make it possible to agree with some things even if they wouldn't have been your first choice. But sometimes you need to win, but sometimes you don't have to win. Let them win occasionally. Yield to their thoughts when you can. Give them a chance to prove they are trying to do better. If they are slipping in following through on assignments or requirements, just encourage and affirm them.

16:33 Listen to their desire to do better. Express your support. Help them with some good steps toward doing better. Just make it a very casual, have you thought of this? You know, once I had a situation like that and this was helpful to me, share your own story. Oh my goodness, they like to hear your story, believe it or not. And then yield. And here is the other important yielding that you will do, and that's to surrender to God. In a recent episode, I shared this personal reality from the time I was a child. I wanted my own way.

17:16 When I came to Jesus, I received him as Savior, but also committed to choose his way, not mine. It was a harder commitment than I realized and involved many failures. Fortunately, much mercy and a lot of do-overs. But God stuck with me on our long prodigal journey, gently reminding me to surrender, to yield to God himself time after time. So how can you really love your prodigal? How can you show respect? How can you encourage?

17:57 How can you affirm? Will you listen? Will you really love them? And will you yield sometimes to them and always to the Lord? So where will you start? Which of these fits your situation with your loved one right now? Write it down or somehow grab hold of it so you don't forget. And even today, start to apply what you can do to really love your prodigal. And again, I will put some resources in the show notes for you. And while you're there, you could, you know, subscribe to the podcast and review the podcast.

18:40 I would be very grateful. I would love to hear how you take steps to really love your wanderer. God bless you.